About Fortuitous Encounters

Fortuitous Encounters: Wisdom Stories for Learning and Growth will increase the positive encounters in your life. Ten authors share short stories about serendipity and how they learned from the causeless miracles in their lives. Each story contains questions for reflection.

A Message from Larry Spears

Introducing Fortuitous Encounters

Welcome to the website devoted to Fortuitous Encounters

Serendips stroll through dictionaries,

cookbooks and itineraries.

They trade the cow for the magic bean

and come on treasures unforeseen.

--- Betty Bridgman

Fortuitous Encounters are the causeless miracles with a person, place, thing, or idea that change your life in a positive direction. A teacher inspires your choice of career. A chance meeting with another person becomes the first time you met your spouse. You look out at the ocean or a mountain and receive deep understanding and peace. We also have experienced these serendipitous events but we rarely talk about them or acknowledge their power in our lives.

Forutitous Encounters: Wisdom Stories for Learning and Growth is a paperback book published by Paulist press that contains short stories and essays from ten different authors about the fortuitous events that changed their lives. Each short story contains questions for reflection to help the reader learn and grow.

Why a book on fortuitous encounters?

Paul Davis is acknowledged as the thought-leader in a personal, professional and organizational development system known as "the Scanlon Plan." Paul has written extensively on the Scanlon Plan. Based on the work of Joe Scanlon, an MIT Lecturer, Union Leader, and Organizational Develoment expert, these plans are highly participative systems, where servant leaders and employees work together to improve their organizations. Joe pioneered employee involvment, gainsharing, goalsharing, profitsharing, suggestion systems, and labor-management cooperation. Dr. Carl Frost further developed Joe's ideas at Michigan State University and created the Frost/Scanlon EPIC Principles. Dr. Frost was a friend and mentor to Paul. Dr. Frost's clients become the most admired and the "best places to work" in America. Dr. Frost encouraged his clients and students to be open to fortuitous encounters. He learned about their power from D.J. DePree, the founder of Herman Miller. To hear about the fortutitous encounter with a millwright-poet that changed the course of DJ's life watch the short movie below.

Larry C. Spears is the foremost authority and thought-leader on Servant Leadership. Larry has helped leaders learn and grow on every continent. He is the author/editor of over 100 books, essays and articles on Servant Leadership. Larry recognizes that leaders must be open to fortuitous encounters if they want to continue to learn and grow. When Paul approached Larry with the idea of creating a book on fortuitous encounters Larry quickly agreed to contribute his considerable skills as both an author and editor.